News

When first introduced, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) were considered a novel improvement to the existing passive mutual fund structure. In addition to tracking a stated market index, ETFs allowed investors to trade at market prices throughout the day. Up until then, standard mutual fund investors had to settle for trading at only end of day […]

Last month we wrote about how unaffordable housing has become as the sharp rise in home prices and interest rates have outpaced income growth. But that was for those buying a home – what about for renters who don’t have to take out a mortgage? Renters have not experienced quite as dramatic a decline in […]

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School Professor who died much too young in 2020, was one of the most important business thinkers of his generation. One of his breakthrough observations was that of “disruptive innovation,” the idea that existing producers of goods, after they become successful, are inclined to move up the value curve to […]

An article in The Wall Street Journal recently noted that people’s financial literacy peaks around 53 or 54. At this age they are best able to make sound decisions around things like credit cards, interest rates, and whether a given fee is worth it or not. This is good news, that people understand the importance […]

Few industries were as hard hit as the automotive sector during the pandemic. Supply chain disruptions, most specifically a shortage of semiconductor chips, sent production levels plummeting across the globe. Here in the U.S., new vehicle inventories fell from just over 3.5 million in early 2020 to below 1.0 million in the summer of 2021 […]

Since the summer of 2021, housing affordability has declined at the sharpest rate in 25 years. The situation has not gotten any better recently. Affordability can be estimated from three moving parts: mortgage rates, home prices, and household income. A common way to think about it is how much of your monthly income is eaten […]

Are we collectively reading more than we used to, or less? Most would probably guess less, and so would I, which is why I was surprised to read in one of Kevin Kelly’s books that “The amount of time people spend reading has almost tripled since 1980.” I haven’t found anything to back up Kevin […]

That’s a stupid question. Of course, I know the year I was born. I know how old I am. Yes, you do indeed know how old you are chronologically, but your mind can play games and the age you feel in your head is not necessarily the age on your birth certificate. Jennifer Senior writing […]

What do you get when you take 724 individuals and regularly track their health and happiness over eight decades? One, you get the world’s longest-running study on human happiness, known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Two, you get a riveting view into the most basic of human questions: What makes a good life? […]

Anyone looking to buy a house is aware of how big an impact mortgage rates have on monthly payments. At the start of 2021, rates were as low as 2.75% only to climb to above 7% last fall. For the median home in Vermont, a 2.75% mortgage works out to a monthly payment of $1,200. […]

In the spirit of transparency, it’s time to “fess up” to things we whiffed on in the past. First up, Globalization. With the publishing of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree in 1999, globalization became a force of nature, impossible to stop and beneficial for everyone. Ugh, we got that wrong. Today globalization […]

On the surface there are big differences between youth unemployment rates in the U.S. and China. In China, the rate for 16 to 24-year-olds is over 20%. For recent college grads in the U.S., it is only 4%, although to be fair, it jumps to 9% for 16 to 19-year-olds — still only about half […]